It was somewhere around 5:23 in the morning on June 13, 2025, when my phone read me that text.
I was rolling down I-40 through Tennessee, somewhere in that stretch of dark highway where the only thing keeping you company is the hum of the engine and whatever your mind decides to throw at you. And at 5:23 AM, one day after being told I had cancer, my mind had plenty of material to work with.
The text was from Brandy. My Boop.
Brandy: It’s just not fair, Daddy
Me: Life is never fair, Baby Girl. Unfortunately, we have to play the cards we’re dealt. Also remember — when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.
Brandy: I’m just so angry at God.
Me: Baby, this is not God’s fault. Not in any way, shape, or form, period. This is part of life. But the beautiful thing will be what God turns it into.
Brandy: He’s not allowed to take you from me!
Me: God’s not taking me from you. But when that day comes, just know I’m going to go down kicking, screaming, and fighting like hell.
Me: And I’m getting a tattoo that says — Heaven’s not ready for me and hell cannot handle me.
Brandy: I just don’t know how to process this at all.
Me: I fully understand that, Baby. I’m trying to process it too. And I’m also trying to figure out how to minimize the pain on Mom and you girls.
Brandy: I don’t know how to be okay. I want to be strong but I don’t know how.
Me: Psalm 46:1 — God is my strength and refuge.
Me: Do I have the strength for this? I don’t know. I know being stubborn and bullheaded will only get me so far. But my strength will come from God. And He will be my comfort when I’m overwhelmed.
I hit send, slipped my phone back into the dock, and kept driving.
That’s what you do when you’re behind the wheel of a semi at 5 in the morning. You keep driving. I had my headset on, voice to text ready — my throat tight, not just from the tears, but from the reality of the news I’d gotten the day before.
Her words settled into my chest like something heavy and permanent.
Here’s what she didn’t know. Couldn’t know.
I was crying.
Not a few tears. The dam broke. Twenty-four hours of holding it together, of trying to be the steady one, of reeling my mind back every time it started drifting toward the dark what-ifs — all of it came loose somewhere on I-40 in the middle of the Tennessee night.
And thank God it was a text. Because my Boop never saw a bit of it.
Because that’s the job, isn’t it? Your kids are hurting and it doesn’t matter that you’re the one with cancer. It doesn’t matter that you’re the one who got the phone call.
The minute one of your babies is broken, you go into dad mode. Full stop.
They’re grown women, all three of mine. But they are still my babies and they always will be. When they hurt, I hurt. And when they’re looking to me for answers at 5 in the morning, I better have some.
So I stared down that road and I thought about what she needed to hear.
Not what I was feeling. What she needed.
And what I told her came from something I’ve believed for a long time.
God didn’t give me cancer.
I know that might catch some people off guard, especially when you’re in the middle of the anger and the grief and the why him, why now, why at all. But hear me out. God gave us free will. The gift of choice. The ability to live our lives the way we choose.
What He didn’t do is sit up there and hand out tumors.
Cancer isn’t punishment. It isn’t abandonment. It’s life. Life happens. It happened to me. It happened to people I love before me.
What God does do is take what happens to us and use it. Turn it into something. Point it somewhere you never would have aimed yourself.
A year ago, you could not have convinced me I’d be laying my soul bare on a screen for strangers to read. That was not my plan. But I took notes anyway because something told me to, and now here I am, and it’s starting to make a certain kind of sense.
If one person reads something I write and feels less alone in this — one person — then whatever I went through was worth something beyond just me surviving it.
That’s not me. That’s something bigger than me pointing me somewhere useful.
And here’s the other thing I needed Boop to understand. The thing I need everyone to understand.
I am at peace.
Not resigned. Not giving up. I am going to fight this with everything I’ve got and no, I am not ready to go anywhere.
But I am at peace.
With God, because I don’t blame Him and never did. With myself, because I’ve always tried to be true to who I am. Faith, family, others — that’s what my parents built into me and that’s how I’ve tried to live.
I’ve had one adventure after another with Barb for 42 years. Three daughters. Six grandchildren. A life so full I genuinely have nothing to complain about. If I’m being honest, God has blessed me far beyond anything I deserve and I have known that for a long time.
So when I say I’m at peace, I mean it all the way down.
If you’ve ever sat alone in the dark — behind a wheel, at a kitchen table, wherever your version of that highway is — trying to hold yourself together for someone who needs you to be strong, I know that weight. I know what it costs to keep driving while you’re breaking. You don’t have to carry it by yourself, and you don’t have to have all the answers before you can offer somebody your steady voice. Just offer it. The peace can come after.
— Scott
Nobody Fights Alone
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” — Philippians 4:13
